Alyssa Armentrout,
Journalism Intern
As a pilot project, the UIL academic department will ask schools in all conferences to register their district competition through the new UIL Spring Meet registration form on-line. Through this new registration, the UIL will be able to see the most popular events as well as complete paperwork and other responsibilities quicker for the regional and state competition.
When academic coordinators prepare to enter their students in contests this spring, they’ll begin by sitting down at their computers.
In 2004, UIL will pilot a new spring meet entry and management system allowing high schools to enter students in academic contests via the Internet. No more paper. No more traditional mail. And hopefully, no more confusion.
Welcome to the 21 st century. High schools will be able to access the new entry system via the UIL web-site.
"It’ll be faster and more accurate," UIL Director of Academics Bobby Hawthorne said. "It’ll save time, energy and countless errors."
Each school in each district in each conference will be able to enter contestants’ names and school information. The program will instantly produce an invoice for billing. Once the process is complete, each district coordinator will receive an e-mail of confirmation. And it’s done.
The UIL hopes to reduce mistakes such as misspelled names and misplaced students in the different academic contests.
"Once a student’s name is typed into the system, it will stay there through district, region and state," Hawthorne said. "We hope to offer more continuity from district all the way through state."
In the past, entries were typed into a database or with a typewriter about seven times during the course of spring competition. With the new system, entries will be typed into the system by each high school and that entry will transfer directly to district meet coordinators and so on, limiting room for error.
Senior systems analyst Larry Woods is building the system. "The biggest challenge with building a program for academics is that there are so many events with so many different rules," he said. "It’s very complicated, but we’re testing it as we go along so, it’ll work."
Woods built a similar program for the Texas State Solo and Ensemble Contest four years ago. UIL Music Director Dick Floyd said the system works better than he ever imagined.
"We had a vision, and Larry really worked with us," he said. "The net result was great."
Floyd said when they implemented the program for music, they were expecting 40 percent of entries to come in over the Internet. Instead, 80 percent of music contestants chose to utilize the new system. Floyd said the program has cut preparation time for the contest by 75 percent.
"I couldn’t believe how many people wanted to do it," he said. "It’s so user-friendly. And it’s really amazing to see how much faster things can be done."
The solo and ensemble contest involves 10,000 events and more than 20,000 contestants, making schedul-ing the biggest issue. With the web system, a good schedule is made automatically.
"It used to take two weeks to create a decent schedule," Floyd said. "But once the program was in place, we could get a schedule in five minutes. This gives us more time to improve our schedule and get other things done. The program still amazes department pilots new registration system; athletics to follow soon me even though I’ve been watching it happen for four years."
Woods said the most complicated part of building an academics system has been the one-act play contest because there are more levels of competition than with the other events. He’s been working on one-act since August.
The task of building this system is complicated already, Woods added. After setting up the database, he built a program to relay information from a school’s computer screen to the database.
Despite the intricate building process, he said the program would be extremely easy for high schools to use.
"There will be a learning curve," he said. "But I was a band director once. Most of the teachers at my school were just as web savvy as I was before I was trained on these programs. And I’m trying to make this as user-friendly as possible."
Floyd said they’ve had no complaints. And he said the program has been a benefit to schools. "In the past someone would sit down at a school and do a pile of paperwork," he said. "With this program, consider that for every hour less spent doing paperwork, that will be one more hour spent in the classroom with the students."
In addition to helping schools, Hawthorne said the program would lend a hand to the UIL staff as well because less time will be spent entering the names of winners and organizing contests.
"If we’re half has happy as Dick [Floyd] it’ll be a success," he said. "It’s going to revolutionize how we do things."